To put it mildly, Adam Warren‘s first outing in a Yankee uniform did not go well. In June 2012, Warren was summoned from Triple-A to make an emergency start against the White Sox in the wake of injuries to both Andy Pettitte and CC Sabathia. The 2009 fourth-round pick couldn’t make it out of the third inning, allowing eight hits – including two home runs – and six runs in a 14-7 loss.

Nearly three years removed from that disastrous debut, Warren has established himself as one of the team’s most valuable middle relievers, and this spring has been given a chance to compete for a potential spot at the back of the rotation (and, at worst, will be the third-best arm in a deep bullpen).

Warren improved his performance dramatically across the board over the last two seasons, reducing his walks and homers allowed while increasing his strikeout rate to nearly one per inning.…

Man it feels good to write a title like that again! The Yanks open their 2015 Spring Training game schedule this afternoon against the Philadelphia Phillies, who are fresh off getting beat by a college team. If only the Daily News could find a way to work a joke about that into a joke about A-Rod on their back page. That would be hilarious!

I was going to wait until the severity of the injury was confirmed to write this, but after sleeping on it I realized I don’t expect the news to be good today anyway so why bother waiting on it? If the news was better, the Yankees probably wouldn’t be waiting to make a formal announcement.

The bad news, via Chad Jennings, is that A-ball catching prospect Luis Torrens has suffered another injury to his right shoulder. The Yankees are in the “still gathering info” stage of dealing with the injury, so there’s a chance it isn’t season-ending, but there were plenty of rumors out there yesterday saying it was. That Billy Eppler is involved already and was the one talking to Jennings suggests that it’s pretty serious.

Torrens missed a few months this past season after suffering a shoulder strain very early in the Low-A season. When he returned from the DL he was sent to SS Staten Island, where he hit .270/.327/.405 in 202 PA and continued to impress everybody with his natural hitting skills and how quickly he took to full-time catching. …

Tomorrow, the Yankees are opening Spring Training in Clearwater against the Phillies and Alex Rodriguez won’t be making that trip. I guess the Yankees would rather him be booed at home during his first Spring Training at-bat! (Of note, the Clearwater game will be shown on MLB Network extremely tape delayed at 9 p.m. and the home opener will be live on YES Wednesday afternoon.)

Today Alex (and some of the other Yankees) faced off against a pitching machine. The pitching machine, named Iron Mike, got the best of him, according to the tweets I’ve been seeing but it could have been worse. Chris Young actually struck out against the machine.

Anyway, at least the question of “when will A-Rod play in his first game?” has been answered and there will be no more speculating.

Yes, the lineups is are longer than usual because they’re playing an intrasquad game and that the real rules don’t apply. It will be six innings in length and the opposing pitcher is a machine so don’t draw many (if any) conclusions about anyone and how they will fare this season. Okay?

The Alex Rodriguez coverage continues to be almost entirely laughable this spring, but yesterday afternoon a few reports came out that were actually worth the time it took to write them. With the Yankees’ ST opener about a day away, the question has been raised of whether A-Rod will play in that game and if so, at what position? The beat guys got on this yesterday and didn’t turn up much. Alex said he had to talk to Joe first, Joe said he had to talk to Alex first, and it sounded like everybody was going to get back and talk about it together today before making a decision.

The Yanks will play a 6-inning intrasquad game today with a pitching machine, and as of this morning it’s still unknown if A-Rod will even participate in that game. While there will be little to take from his performance in his first game, whenever that may be, I do think the Yankees realize that this decision does carry more weight with it than it normally would. …

This was supposed to be announced yesterday, but Joe wanted to wait a day and reconvene with his staff after the rainout before making the call. The reconvening has been done, the decisions have been made, and the announcement is all but official. Via Wally Matthews, the first 3 Spring Training starters will be Adam Warren, Nathan Eovaldi, and Esmil Rogers. Warren gets the ST opener on Tuesday, Eovaldi will throw Wednesday, and Rogers Thursday.

The decision to start Warren and Rogers early is hardly a surprising one. With both of them being told to stretch out and prepare as starters this offseason, they’re a step or 2 ahead of the rest of the rotation in terms of game readiness. They also don’t have lingering injury concerns like most of the other projected starters.

Eovaldi got an early start on his spring activities as well, so it’s exciting to see him get one of the early game assignments. …

The weather wiped out most of yesterday’s planned spring camp activities. For Brendan Ryan, that was probably a good thing. It hasn’t been a promising start to what is a critically important ST for him if he wants to stay in pinstripes. He was the first official injury casualty of the spring, straining his back earlier in the week while doing biceps curls. The Yankees have said he’s only expected to be out for 5 days, but backs can be tricky and they’ve been known to try to sell more serious injuries as minor ones.